Ukip is in touch with ordinary British people

THE nation stands at a crossroads.

PUBLISHED: PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sun, May 3, 2015

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Ukip's leader Nigel Farage has changed the landscape of British politics

On Thursday, Britain will vote in the closest General Election for a generation. The days when our collective fates were parcelled up between the old order of Conservative and Labour are gone. They will never return, for the ground has irrevocably shifted. No party has done more to churn the landscape of British politics than Ukip.

Once it seemed that the faint whispers of this grassroots movement would remain forever relegated to the fringes of society.

If they were heard at all they were dismissed by a high-handed establishment, being branded “fruitcakes” and “clowns”.

Yet the Ukip message resonated with too many voters to be ignored. Suddenly, the name-calling stopped. Ukip has forced the Tories to become more Conservative. It also stands for the working class who do not wish to be represented by career politicians of Ed Miliband’s ilk.

In some quarters it has already been labelled “the new Labour Party”.

To understand its broad appeal simply consider its commonsense messages.

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Ukip has forced Cameron's Tories to become more Conservative

Britain is at a crossroads. Vote Ukip to ensure our great country is on the right path

No other party has been as forthright as Ukip in addressing the elephant in the room: immigration.

From the overcrowded waiting rooms at our doctors’ surgeries to our overcrowded schools, we have all been feeling the effects of Labour’s disastrous immigration policy on our tiny island, when one newcomer arrived every minute.

Only now have the main political parties woken up to the fact that voters who care about immigration aren’t racists: they are realists.

The demands for a referendum on Europe were similarly shrugged off as an irrelevance and dismissed as unimportant by the three main parties for years. The Government – and Brussels – had always known best. No longer. It will be a key factor in Thursday’s vote. These are Ukip victories. We have Nigel Farage to thank for putting them so firmly on the agenda.

Was it any surprise that last week’s final debate, to which Mr Farage was not invited to participate, saw one of the most balanced Question Time audiences in BBC history? Which leader was it who called out the BBC for its bias?

Which leader was it who, in this newspaper, threatened legal action to ensure the Left-wing BBC complied with its legal obligations to be neutral?

Others stayed silent when Ukip spoke and it was as a direct result of Mr Farage’s words that change was achieved. This is Ukip’s message: that change is possible.

It invites change with its far-reaching, fully costed and independently verified manifesto based on old-fashioned common sense:

Establishing grammar schools in every town, where academically bright children can benefit from a demanding education.

Reforming our smoking laws, which are so draconian that they have led to pubs, the social hub of most communities, shutting at a rate of 31 a week.

Using the £11.7billion we pay in foreign aid every year to help fund important projects at home.

Recognising the importance of Armed Forces veterans and rewarding them with affordable housing – 500 to be built every year because one in every 10 homeless people served Queen and country.

Ukip is also the only party that has stated from the outset where its spending money is coming from. It makes no secret of its plan to save billions by leaving the Europe Union, making reasonable cuts to the overseas aid budget, reviewing the hated Barnett Formula – the funding mechanism which favours Scotland with taxpayers’ money – and cancelling HS2, the costly high-speed rail network.

In return Ukip plans to abolish inheritance tax altogether as well as equalling the Conservative pledge to scrap income tax for those on the minimum wage.

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Ukip has taken safe Labour seats by storm

Change is coming because Mr Farage’s message is already striking home. Here we spell out why we believe you should vote Ukip and how a Ukip vote will serve your interest and those of this great country.

Mr Farage must be elected when Thanet South heads for the polls this week. No other politician has done more to shake up the cosy Westminster landscape and he must reap his reward.

To our readers in the North who have stuck by this paper while experiencing good times and bad, we say that this election is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring about a lasting difference.

Vote Ukip to strike at the Labour heartlands. Nowhere else are people’s votes being taken for granted, with so little given in return. Labour support has been handed down unthinkingly from one generation to the next and the party still believes that your vote is its birthright.

It is not. It is time to smash the Labour strongholds.

It is time to say no to Labour’s dangerous brand of socialism dreamt up by a cosseted idealist in his multi-million-pound mansion and his gang of discredited Left-wing cronies. Their legacy to the UK was a note boasting “there is no money”.

Labour believes that it can refuse a referendum on Europe, decline to place any limits on immigration and still get your vote.

It believes that it can form an alliance with the SNP, a party that wants to break up the UK itself once it has destroyed our nuclear deterrent, and still get your vote.

It believes it can continue to spend money without consequence, to reward the workshy and feckless at the cost of the hardworking taxpayer... and still get your vote. It is time to show it will not.

Ukip has been criticised as a Right-wing party. Yet for grass-root voters it represents the people Labour has long left behind: the backbone of Britain.

These are the people who, for idealistic reasons of their own might never contemplate voting Tory but who equally could not stomach Mr Miliband’s Labour government, in all likelihood propped up by the SNP.

As one of many examples, take the resilient fishing port of Grimsby. Much maligned and often ignored by London, it is in towns like this that the real sea change is taking place.

For 45 years it has been safe Labour. By this time next week it could be have a Ukip MP thanks to an understanding of how immigration and EU laws, not least on the vital fishing industry, are central to residents’ lives.

We could not put it more eloquently than one Grimsby market trader: “Nigel Farage still seems to be in touch with people like myself.”

For all their polling, for all their experts and spin doctors, for all their complicated electoral models, the main parties have missed the simple secret to winning widespread support. Nigel Farage has not. If you want Britain’s votes, you must listen to the British people.